I grin, all teeth. “Oh, everything that matters. But you only get the answers once we’re off-site. Consider it a reward.”
Valentine looks between us like he’s watching God lose an argument.
We start walking – me front and centre, my killers orbiting like planets that know precisely which sun they belong to. Valentine’s keeping a safe distance in the rear. Good. I haven’t decided what to do about him yet. I don’t trust him at all, but I have a feeling my guys are here, at least in part, thanks to him, so I guess it would be rude to kill him right off the bat.
The alarms start up again, late and confused, like they woke up with a hangover and realised the house is on fire.
Bones whistles low. “You really did a number on this place.”
“I know,” I say modestly. “I’m very proud.”
Nightshade dips his head until his lips brush my temple. “Never disappear from me again.”
“Then don’t let me get kidnapped,” I chide. “Teamwork makes the dream work!”
Snow snorts so loudly it echoes.
The facility groans as systems begin to fail. Lights flicker. Doors stall. The building is dying.
Ahead is freedom. Behind is carnage.
Inside me, the baby rolls once, patient and certain.
“Come on,” I say, leading them into the collapsing hallway. “There’s so much to show you. So much to ruin. So much to learn. And the Director and I have unfinished business.”
Nightshade whispers, almost lovingly, “We’ll burn him last.”
I pat his cheek. “Good boy. You get to hand me the Napalm.”
We walk into the night together.
A LITTLE EXTRA GARNISH JUST FOR FUN
I Like You Best - Ella Red
Bones
Kayla walks out of that corridor like a general leading her army and a crime scene leading itself. The alarms cough overhead, lights stutter, the building groans, and she just…glows. Blood on her arms, blood on her throat, boots leaving faint prints where it’s still wet. If I didn’t know her, I’d be worried. Because that’s not the look of a victim. That’s the look of someone who got everything she wanted and a little extra garnish just for fun.
Nightshade sticks to her side like he’s welded there, one hand on her waist, the other hovering just shy of her stomach whenever the floor lurches. Ghost stalks a half-step behind, eyes flicking over every door, every camera, every smear on the wall like he’s scrolling through reference shots he’ll paint later justto get it out of his head. Hatchet floats along the far side of the corridor, silent as a shadow, but I catch the small, sharp curve at the corner of his mouth when he looks at the bodies we pass. Honeymonster is grinning like he’s on a fucking theme park ride. Snow oscillates between laughing too hard and going ghost-pale whenever Kayla mentions “mulch”.
And Valentine brings up the rear, trying not to step in anything. He looks like he’s just realised the zoo enclosure never had glass. Every time Kayla tosses another line over her shoulder – soup, wood chipper, flower garden watered with blood – he flinches like she’s throwing knives. I can’t tell if I hate him on sight or if I just hate that he’s here to witness this at all.
We move through the hallways she’s already baptised. You can feel the shape of what she did in the air: not chaos, exactly, but chaos that started out with a plan and then got bored halfway through and decided to be creative. There are wheel tracks smeared in red where some poor bastard tried to move a trolley over the mess and slipped. There’s a chair on its side, a clipboard stamped into a sticky patch on the floor, a pair of broken spectacles ground under someone’s heel. A door hangs askew on one hinge, a smear of darker red at handle height where a hand tried to grab or push or hold it shut.
Kayla keeps up a running commentary like a tour guide on a very niche bus. “That one tried to sedate me,” she chirps as we step over a man in scrubs facedown in the doorway, an empty syringe still stuck in his hand. “Didn’t check the dosage. Very sloppy.”
“Tragic,” I say. “Bet he was great at potlucks.”
She flashes me a grin, bright and feral. “He died as he lived: unremarkably.”
Nightshade’s lips twitch. He’s trying to stay focused – threat assessment, exit routes, baby – but she’s making it hard. Every time she opens her mouth, another screw comes loose in hisspine. He keeps dragging his touch back to her stomach, like he has to confirm every thirty seconds that there’s still movement in there and not just empty space.
“You really hacked this Director person?” I ask as we pass a nurses’ station that looks like a paper bomb went off in it – files scattered, a computer monitor tilted at a bad angle, coffee mug smashed on the floor.
“Hacked?” she sniffs. “Please. I waltzed. Man’s password hygiene is a crime all on its own. Do you know he used his own birthday for three different accounts?”
“Bold of him to assume he deserved one,” I mutter.
